Re:

In Australia we used to have a clothing and manufacturing industry, in
fact during the 50s we were close to being the worlds largest producer
of televisions and radios. Then they discovered Asia.

Now we are seeing most software opportunities moving to Asia. The big
companies state they are doing it for their shareholders.

Locally the average software developer has had a 50% pay cut in the last
few years. Many are loosing work permanently.

I would suggest the smart move would be to find a software product you
like and duplicate it. Then you are in the business of selling software.
Make your product cheaper than the competitor and fight it out. With
online sales your overheads are low. Make software for Linux, it can not
be a looser for this market segment will grow.

I read that there were 15 million users of a graphics package that
regularly pay $500 for an upgrade every two years. If you can capture 2%
of this market then your off and running.

Just remember the next time you go to a store, look at the label and buy
local.

Cheers
Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Ioffe [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, 9 June 2003 12:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [DOTNET-JOBS]


Very interesting postings, let's keep them coming...

As far as "how low one can go":

Location: Los Angeles
Open-ended contract... $20 in hour doing asp.net, simple ado.net, stored
procedures and up keeping existing e-commerce site (ASP.old).

I believe it is well underpaid, but there is such a thing as objective
reality. It pays for a babysitter and few other expenses.

It doesn't matter how experienced you are. What matters is what kind of
a job a company has available.

Regards,

Alex Ioffe

-----Original Message-----
From: Unmoderated DOTNET job forum
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bob
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 11:52 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [DOTNET-JOBS]

Tom,

--- Tom Cabanski <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well, there are many shops out there pulling this kind of crap and
they
> are getting desperate people to bite.  After all, the market is pretty

> bad right now.

It's so bad here in the Austin/San Antonio, Texas area that I'm going to
have to seriously consider a career change soon. Just for reference,
I've been unemployed since August of 2002 with the exception of a few
.Net contracts.

> The only good news in all of this is that once the
> market picks up again, and it will, companies like this one will
suffer
> tremendous turnover as a result of their short-sighted attempts to
take
> shameless advantage of people. The bad news, however, is that larger 
> trends like the move towards cheaper developers offshore make it 
> unlikely that the market will ever approach the levels reached during 
> the mid to late nineties.
>

This is correct.

> Having said that, what was going on back in the boom wasn't right 
> either.  I had candidates attempt to take cell phone calls in the
middle
> of interviews.  I can't tell you how many H1 sweat shops presented 
> absolutely unqualified candidates that were clearing lying about their

> experience; they all seemed to have exactly seven years of experience.

> People were jumping from job to job in a year or less and attempting
to
> hold employers hostage.  In general, technicians demonstrated an 
> overriding arrogance and greed that was simply amazing to see.  Is it 
> any surprise that some employers are content to screw programmers 
> because they see it as payback for the way they were getting screwed
in
> the past?

Hmmm. I guess I'm too honest and professional to do that, but I sure
have been on the receiving end of the stick. In one year I worked 500+
hours of unpaid, is there any other kind?, overtime, including 7 days a
week between Memorial Day and the 4th of July. During my review I
received the just below, "Walks on water" rating, was told I was the
best developer the company had, and because of that, my raise was 1/2 of
1% above the AVERAGE raise.

Then there was the company where the President read all your mail and
decided if you could have it or not, refused to do direct deposit of
your paycheck and handed them out after 15:00 on payday Fridays so they
couldn't hit his account until Monday.

At my last job, I was told I would be on call one week out of four.
That's not bad, but I soon discovered that you were really on call 24x7
when I had my cell phone off during my non-call time and my manager
chewed me out one morning because he couldn't reach me the previous
night. One of the network managers told me that the frequency of calls
he got while on call had dropped dramatically since I started working
there. It seems I have this bad habit of testing my code before I put it
in production.

Since this list is about jobs, I guess I should say that if anyone needs
a good VB.Net/SQL developer who is also teaching himself C#, and has
over 20 years of development experience, send me an email.

Bob



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